Wealth, Office and Rank in Roman Italy

by Bart Danon

Overview

Dismantling the simplistic equation of wealth, political power and social rank in the Roman empire, this study presents a new reconstruction of the distribution of elite wealth in Roman Italy based on an innovative combination of economic modelling and archaeological and epigraphic evidence. Bart Danon follows a quantitative approach to show that the Roman economic elite was in fact much larger than the political and social elites. The many wealthy households outside the socio-political orders fuelled intense competition for junior political offices, while paradoxically strengthening the resilience of the Roman political system. By challenging long-held assumptions, this book offers fresh perspectives on the complexities of wealth and power in ancient Rome. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009496971
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/17/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

BART Danon is Assistant Professor in Ancient History at the University of Groningen. He works on the social and economic history of the Roman Empire, with a focus on inequality, urbanisation and slavery. He is a co-editor of The Uncertain Past (Cambridge, 2023).

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Wealthy Italy; 2. Developments in the early-imperial Italian economy; 3. Reconstructing historical wealth distributions; 4. Wealth and political office at Pompeii; 5. The heterogeneity of the Italian civitates; 6. The Italian curial councils; 7. Italian households with curial wealth; 8. Wealth inequality among Italian elites; 9. The Italian wealth distribution; 10. Competition for senatorial positions; 11. Timocracy, wealth and resiliance; Concluding remarks.